Chapter 3 - The Benefactor
Sarah Miller stood rigidly at the foot of the bed, her hands twisting the fabric of her scrub top. She was a single mother working double shifts just to keep the heat on, and now she was staring down a billionaire who had supposedly vanished off the face of the earth.
"You want me to hide you," Sarah clarified, her voice trembling but surprisingly steady. "You want me to risk my job, and possibly my life, to help you disappear."
"I want you to be my proxy," Arthur corrected, shifting slightly to alleviate the burning pain in his lower back. "I cannot trust my lawyers. I cannot trust my board of directors. And I certainly cannot trust my fiancée or my brother. I need someone entirely off the grid."
"Why me?"
"Because your son is the only person who visited me for three months," Arthur said, gesturing to the wall of crayon drawings. "He gave me eighty-nine reasons to wake up. That tells me you raised him right. It tells me you have integrity. And right now, integrity is the rarest commodity in my world."
Sarah looked at the wall, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Toby had dragged her to this room every single day after school.
"What do you need?" she asked softly.
"I need a burner phone, a laptop with a secure VPN, and a wheelchair," Arthur instructed. "I have offshore accounts that are untraceable to Sterling Global. I will transfer five million dollars into an account under your name by tomorrow morning. You will use it to lease a private, secure property outside the city. It needs to have ground-floor access and absolute privacy."
May you like
Sarah’s breath hitched at the sum of money. "Five million?"
"That is just for expenses," Arthur replied. "When I reclaim my company, you and Toby will never have to worry about a single bill for the rest of your lives. But right now, Sarah, I need you to be my legs."
